Tuesday, September 22

It sprinkled a little this morning while I was riding my bike. And then I saw a full rainbow, so that was pretty cool :-)

Sort of goes with this new song I'm enjoying: One Day Like This. I'm a sucker for strings, high hat and vocal harmonies :-)

A few of the lyrics: 'It's looking like a beautiful day ... Throw those curtains wide / one day like this a year'd see me right (for life).'

Ok, today wasn't quite that good, but it was a nice start :-)

Doing very well with Weigh Down right now. The principal results has been almost completely eliminating snacks and only eating at mealtimes. So I'd guess I'm cutting out about 400 calories a day right there.

I'm also experimenting with not having a glass of wine every day. That's 100+ calories per weekday (I'm still 'indulging' on the weekend).

Down to 203 for two days, back up to 204 for two days. Some of this is just normal bodily variation. As I keep doing the right thing, I expect to drop another pound sometime soon and hope to reach 200 (or 199!) by October.

'Hunger' is such a subjective feeling, and so much of it is psychological. In the loosest sense of the word, all 'dieting', all sub-basal-metabolic-rate eating, is 'starving' ourselves. In those broadest senses, I'm 'hungry' all the time and I am 'starving' myself by eating fewer calories than my body burns in a day.

I have identified about three levels of hunger:

1. the initial stages: stomach feels empty, but there is no slackening of function. Anyone who wants to lose weight by conventional means is going to spend a fair amount of time in this zone. Can you take it? Can I?

2. hypoglycemia: I start to notice lower tolerance for aggravation. I'm easily annoyed. May be a little more irritable.

3. stomach starts to rumble. This is the eating threshold in Weigh Down, though not necessarily immediate eating (approximate range is within an hour, depending on what you're doing and how you're feeling).

Strict Weigh Down would probably mean not eating at regular mealtimes if you're not at that third level. But I'm not doing that. I eat my normal breakfast, wait on lunch as late as 12:30 or so (I used to eat promptly at 11:30) and then eat dinner with my family, able to wait until 6:30 or 7 (I used to almost demand to eat promptly at 5:30). So far, it's working well for me.

The trick, of course, is can you get through the progression from stage 1 to stage 3? Sometimes it feels like I hardly stay out of stage 1, that I'm in it most of the time. In fact, I walked/jogged last night in stage 1 hunger and, let me tell you, that's a new behavior for me.

Maybe the biggest focus of Weigh Down is spiritual and I'm doing pretty well with it. I'd say it's helping me cope with the desire for food, especially between hunger stages 1 and 3.

A big thanks to Tia for recommending Weigh Down. I'm getting a ton out of it. It's gone from being a possible supplement to my weight loss approach to being the primary avenue, and a gateway to even a little expansion of spiritual perspective as well.